December 6, 2014, Patrick Ruckert, Los Angeles. From November 16, through December 22, 1864-- 150 years ago, right now-- one of the most astounding flanking attacks in the history of warfare was carried out by General William Tecumseh Sherman, as he devastated the Confederacy with his March to the Sea-- his 300 mile march with 62,000 Union troops right through the heart of Georgia, from Atlanta to Savannah, violated every then accepted principle of warfare. General Sherman is probably the greatest practitioner of the principle of the flank in warfare.

What was the U.S. Civil War?  As Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg address, a test “whether this nation can long endure.”  As as Lyndon LaRouche put it:  “...the United States is not simply a collection of local states. The United States is the name of a Union, which is indivisible, despite what happened in the period of the Civil War....  And it means that the local states are not independent states as such; they are subjects of the United States. Their subject elements are integral to the United States as a whole...the idea that a particular state has its own independent right, in terms of the United States is a delusion, and implicit treason. There is only one United States; there are no separate states -- that was a Confederate idea. We don't like the Confederacy.”